09/04/2018 - "Hard Crash: The Crystal Citadel" by Silver Serpent

[Jigoku]

Map Title: Hard Crash: The Crystal Citadel
Author: §ìlvèr§èrpënt AKA Xer06siX
From: Hard Crash
Filename: HCLF8.unr
Music Files: None




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnggZSl2uKA

Synopsis: You enter a bright valley gaurded by mercenaries and other things.

Discuss!

[Buff Skeleton]

I haven't played this yet, but damn that is a wonderful looking skybox from the screenshots.

[UBerserker]

I haven't played this yet, but damn that is a wonderful looking skybox from the screenshots.

It's also pretty dynamic looking with the colorful lights. Not the best skybox in terms of pleasant/NOT-HELL visuals but it's certainly one of the most unique.

This level kind of screams Doom/Quake all over (with the Hawken pyramid reference as seen in the shot). It's a fun arcade-y conclusion to a fun, VERY arcade-y mappack. It's sorta like Skaarj Castle maps where there's a lot of mindless ammo/weapon placing everywhere, while monster placement is more sensible, with unexpected and tricky monster spawns.
You basically never run out of ammo until you fight the bosses that are enormously buffed (HP only) versions of a Warlord and a Titan. The Titan takes fucking forever to kill and was almost running out of ammo killing the thing (and it was also really boring); after them you fight a Queen that spawns in, which means that unlike the other bosses she has vanilla stats (and doesn't teleport anywhere I think?). The rest overall is really fine though, great freestyle gameplay. Visuals in this map are love-it or hate-it but it's both bizzarre and awesome how the mappack ends this way after a very typical Unreal custom mappack beginning. Definitely wish it would have come out 10 years ago with a more healthy community.

[Semfry]

The video won't finish uploading until tomorrow, so I'll guess I'll comment now.

I realised I haven't posted about playing the new HC version yet. Since what little story there is basically dries up after the temple map, it's hard to tell what's going on here, but it's a really unique setting with an interesting skybox and huge scale areas. The gameplay is a little strange as a result of the lack of context, because the boss fights earlier (the Warlord and Queen) felt built up to throughout the earlier levels, whereas now you just fight a bunch in a row at the end, and it feels a little odd that these final fights have less build-up than the ones that happened earlier (though it's nice that the Queen actually has working teleports), it's enjoyable though, although the scale does make the AI pretty exploitable. The ending serves it's function although just escaping on a ship doesn't give much more context to it (although the weird creepy giant baby texture thing in the temple right before feels like one last callback to the stranger stuff).